Horsehead, Flame, and Pacman

Some rough weather over the weekend led to beautifully clear skies Sunday night and I was able to capture the Horsehead, Flame, and Pacman nebulae with Star2-D2.  The Horsehead and Flame are located near Orion’s Belt and the brightest star in the image is Alnitak.  Pacman is located near Cassiopeia.  They all are interstellar clouds of dust and gas.

Winter Gems

 

Messier 103

Double Cluster in Perseus

NGC 457 (Owl Cluster)

Messier 34

Another great winter night and it was time to capture some beautiful star clusters.  These are some of the most famous.

Pleiades and Orion Nebula

 

The first night of the holiday break and was blessed with beautifully cold and clear skies.  Decided to try out Star2-D2 on a couple of my favorites; the Pleiades and the Orion Nebula.  The little scope that could did not disappoint!

Revisiting the Pleiades (M45)

 

The Pleiades (Messier 45) is one of my all-time favorites.  This is my 4th attempt at photographing this beautiful asterism.  My first try was over 10 years ago on October 24, 2013 with much different equipment, skill, and patience.  I'm glad to say the results are improved and look forward to my next attempt! 

Photo Details

December 20, 2024

Orion 8" Astrograph on CGEM II Mount

SBIG STF-8300C Camera

Skyglow filter

36 subframes at 3 minutes/frame

Total Exposure Time = 1 hours 48 minutes
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop

Comet C/2023 A3

 

Back in October we were blessed with a cosmic visitor; Comet C/2023 A3.  It was amazingly bright and even visible naked eye with serious skyglow light pollution.  We captured it both with iPhone and Star2-D2.  

M101 (Pinwheel Galaxy)

 

This beautiful face-on pinwheel galaxy is number 101 in Messier's list, but was discovered in 1781 by Pierre Mechain.  Also known as a "grand design spiral", it spans about 184,000 light years across (twice as large as our own Milky Way!) and the light captured in this photo is over 22 million years old.  Astronomers estimate the number of stars in this behemoth at over 1 trillion!  Some of the brighter spots along the spiral arms are active star forming regions, while three supernovae (think stellar death) have been observed in this massive galaxy.  

Photo Details

June 8, 2024

Orion 8" Astrograph on Celestron AVX Mount

SBIG STF-8300C Camera

Skyglow filter

21 subframes at 3 minutes/frame

Total Exposure Time = 1 hour 3 minutes
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop

First Solar Time Lapse

This is my first attempt at a Solar time lapse.  It covers about an hour on the morning of March 30, 2024.  Images were captured 15 seconds apart with a Lunt solar scope in double-stacked mode.  Batch processing was done in Autostakkert, followed by aligning and curve adjustment in ImPPG.  Final processing and converting to video was done in Photoshop.

 

Springtime Bees and Easter Eggs

 

While bees are pollinating springtime flowers on Earth, it's a great time to see the Beehive Cluster (Messier 44) and go hunting for eggs (Messier 1 - Crab Nebula).  Both these objects have a long history.  The Beehive has been observed since antiquity, though it wasn't until Galileo looked through his telescope that it was recognized as a cluster of stars rather than a single object.  The earliest record of the Crab Nebula came in July of 1054 when a bright object appeared near the Sun and was even observed in the daytime through the end of that month.  It was observable with the naked eye at night for the next two years.  Though considered a bad omen when it was first observed, we now understand it as a supernova remnant and has a beautiful structure that has an overall egg shape.  The Beehive is only about 610 light years from Earth though there's about two dozen stars that dominate the image, astronomers have attributed about 200 stars to this open cluster.

Photo Details

April 29, 2024

M44 (Beehive)

AstroTech 65Q on Celestron AVX Mount

SBIG STF-8300C Camera

Skyglow filter

15 subframes at 3 minutes/frame

Total Exposure Time = 45 minutes
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop

M1 (Crab Nebula)

Seestar S50

Total Exposure Time = 34 minutes

Image Processing in Photoshop

Sol from September 23

 

We are 15 days from the North American Total Solar Eclipse.  It should be a fantastic show given the level of solar activity...now, we just need clear skies.  

Photo Details

September 4, 2023
Lunt Ha 60mm double-stacked solar telescope

ZWO ASI178MM 
SharpCap - 8 Bit Mono
Image Stacking in AutoStakkert
Adjustments in ImPPG
Final Adjustments in Photoshop

Solar Activity in August 2023

 

I'm slowly working my way through images taken over the summer. These were from back in August and the level of activity remained high.  

Photo Details

August 19, 2023
Lunt Ha 60mm double-stacked solar telescope

ZWO ASI178MM 
SharpCap - 8 Bit Mono
Image Stacking in AutoStakkert
Adjustments in ImPPG
Final Adjustments in Photoshop

Sol in Early June 2023

 

These were from back in June and it's amazing to see all the filaments and clouds of gas hovering over the solar disk.  They form in magnetic loops and are just off the surface of the sun and are cooler than the chromosphere below them.  Solar weather at its finest.

Photo Details

June 3, 2023
Lunt Ha 60mm double-stacked solar telescope

ZWO ASI178MM 
SharpCap - 8 Bit Mono
Image Stacking in AutoStakkert
Adjustments in ImPPG
Final Adjustments in Photoshop

Jupiter at Opposition and Saturn

 

Jupiter reach opposition on November 3 and it was a reasonably clear Friday night so I packed up my gear and headed out to my dark sky location to catch the Jovian Giant in all its glory.  The seeing conditions weren't great, so I didn't get as much detail as I was hoping for, but did pick up Europa just before it started transiting across the disk and the Great Red Spot was well positioned for the image.  I also was able to make out the Cassini Division (gap in rings) on Saturn.  Overall, a reasonably productive night.

Photo Details

November 3, 2023
Celestron 7" Mak-Cas
ZWO ASI178MM 
SharpCap - 8 Bit Mono through RGB filters
Image Stacking in AutoStakkert
Adjustments in Registax 6
Final Adjustments in Photoshop